How Minecraft Teaches Me The Meaning of Life

It's always fun when you're talking about gaming, especially a game called Minecraft that has been there since 2009.This game also gained massive amounts of popularity among the players because the freedom that the game gives to its players. Starting from various type of biomes, mobs, roles, dimensions, and even items. In this game, you're not required to do something, you do whatever you want, that's the freedom I've been talking about.

I’ve been playing Minecraft since I was a kid. The first thing I saw that made me intrigued by Minecraft was the day when my friend showed me a gameplay from his phone, even though it had lego-shaped texture, I was really captivated by it. Well, it didn’t go well at first because the price of the game was so expensive, around 99K rupiahs, but what I did was just use the cracked version of Minecraft, rather than paying for that. I was a kid back then, so I didn’t have much money to pay for that.

Soon after months passed by, I realized that Minecraft is not just about grinding gears, fighting mobs that are hard to take out, or even achieving rare items. But it’s also about friendship, I realized that every time I play with my friends, I always trust them no matter how difficult the situation was, whether it’s in real life or even in the game. We never truly leave each other, in real life I was struggling with school, life, or maybe just about random gloomy days, but he was always there with me, always asking me to play Minecraft together. Even in Minecraft, whenever we traveled through biomes, we always never left each other, we fought mobs, we attained rare items together, and even built random things together. And yet, Minecraft shows me that brotherhood is always important no matter how hard life is, and it’s not only about real life, but also about a game too.

But life started to get serious lately. The spark of playing Minecraft slowly faded away as time passes, people stopped talking about Minecraft anymore, somewhere in between, I grew up with that game, either I play it or not. And for years after? I’ll still be wondering why I always go back to the cycle people keep talking about. It’s called the “2 week Minecraft phase,” there’s even an Urban Dictionary about it that says “The annual 2 week phase of Minecraft grind that most people find themselves stuck in.” Even though it’s weird, this phenomenon seems universal to most Minecraft players, including me.

For better understanding about 2 week Minecraft phase: click here (YouTube) 

Every time I come back and load into the game, everything seems so good as I get obsessed with it, many things that I can do, build, or even discover. But as the 2 weeks passed, everything seems boring and I started to stop. But why? It’s not like I want to play because of the game, but more about the presence, I miss everything I used to do back then, the laughter, the jokes I used to say to my friends, and even the things we used to do together. It’s not me missing a game, it’s me missing a moment where I was a kid. Every time I play the game, it just feels empty and I don’t know why.

The nostalgia, it's unbearable for me to hold. Every time I stumble upon Minecraft things, like the music, the game, or even a video about it, memories start to flood back in my head: the joy, the sweetness, and even slightly sad. It’s just reminding me about how the game was fun back then. But as a human being, I should keep living, doing what I should do, but sometimes looking back at the things I used to do and appreciating the moment. A reminder for me to say to myself that “I’m already doing my best, and that’s okay.”

Until now, Minecraft has become one of my core memories, the nostalgia, and also an appreciation of the present that I am going through. I remember the line that encourages me so much when I beat the Ender Dragon, the last boss of the game before the ending cutscene. It says, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” When I was a kid, I didn’t even pay attention to this, but as I grew older, I realized that life is starting to get difficult, and that line hits me hard in my heart. Especially the word ‘Discover.’ It encourages me to not be afraid of something I don’t know, but I should keep going and brace the unknown. So I hope every soul that has read this may find your own piece of nostalgia, the things that encourage you the most, and even the perseverance to brace the things that are uncertain for you. (ARD)